Ticked Softly Into One
by arianna99
Summary: Jack picks out Ianto's tie, the morning the world almost ends again. J/I, slash, Journey's End ficlet


**Title: **Ticked Softly Into One  
**Fandom/ Pairing: **TW/ Jack/Ianto  
**Diclaimer: **rtd, bbc, etc.  
**Rating: **R  
**Summary: **Jack picks out Ianto's tie the morning the world almost ends again. Journey's End ficlet.

"Wear this one," Jack says the morning the world almost ends again, holding out a striped tie. Jack has been inspecting his wardrobe for the right tie for Ianto to wear this morning. He likes having a say in what Ianto wears. The tie is black, white and a pinkish colour all females in Ianto's acquaintance (and Jack, of course) claim suits him.

"Are you sure?" Ianto says, more teasing than anything, because it's not as if his life depends on whether his tie will match the precise shade of pale pink his shirt is, however serious Jack is making it sound.

"Oh yeah," Jack responds, putting the tie around Ianto's neck and tying it. It takes a good amount of Ianto's willpower not to rub his cheek against Jack's hand like a kitten.

-

Jack comes home far too late, though Gwen and Ianto are still there, still cleaning up the mess in the Hub left behind by this most recent almost-end-of-the-world.

He accepts Gwen's hug with good grace, kisses her cheek and sends her home to her husband.

Ianto stays.

He always does.

He tries to start giving Jack a report, because they're still on the clock, but Jack is having none of it. He crosses the room, kisses Ianto, properly, deeply, none of that parental forehead crap he pulled before he went haring off to save the world.

"You kept the tie on," Jack says.

"Yeah," Ianto says.

They both know Ianto hates having a tie on after the crisis has past. It's just a pet peeve, really, but when the adrenaline leaves his system and he crashes back down to earth, bones and muscles and brain pleasantly fluid, he hates the confinement of the knot right at his throat. It makes the little jolts of what-if fear Ianto hasn't quite been able to shake yet that much worse; what if Tosh's system hadn't saved our lives, what if Jack hadn't come back, what if my tie had gotten caught on something and I choked.

On the days when Jack picks his ties, though, he likes leaving them on. Especially when things get dangerous. Just like the what-if worries, there are some things Ianto can't shake, like the thought that Jack may not want to come back, or may not be able to, the last vestiges of insecurity clinging hard, though Jack tries valiantly to kill them.

He likes the thought that he's wearing something Jack put on him, those days. He feels like he's closer to Jack then.

"I always was coming back, you know that, right?" Jack says.

"Intellectually," Ianto answers. Jack's arms feel right around him, and Ianto's not sure whether he'd rather burrow into Jack's heat and feel comforted or kiss Jack and feel loved.

Jack envelops him in a proper hug, and Ianto spares a thought to how strange they must look, wrapped together standing in the middle of the empty Hub.

"You can take the tie off now," Jack says quietly.

Ianto wonders how much further down it will still go before he's quite finished falling in love with Jack.

-

Later still, tied to his own bed with his own striped tie, Ianto wonders very little as Jack drives him insane with his mouth, beyond a vague inclination to reciprocate, given that Jack is the big strapping hero and given how much of a turn-on that is.

"Lie still," Jack says, and goes back to sucking at one of Ianto's balls. Ianto's mind is pleasantly blank on happy hormones and Jack. Jack, who can probably smell the pheromones he's helping to produce and feeling extremely smug about it, Jack who is currently about to fuck him blind and then, hopefully, finally let him come.

He does, of course, and it's magnificent, because it's Jack, and Jack is magnificent, even in the afterglow, with a sheen of sweat cooling on his chest, nipping at Ianto's wrist as he undoes the knot tying Ianto to the frame of the bed.

"We might want to save this one for special occasions," Jack says, throwing the tie in the vague direction of Ianto's closet.

"Mm. For Thursdays," Ianto says, cuddling up to Jack's chest, half asleep already.

"Thursdays?" Jack asks, and Ianto could get used to the feeling of that vibration in Jack's chest against his ear. Maybe he could get Jack to sing him a lullabye someday.

"Never could get the hang of Thursdays," Ianto mumbles back.

"Why not?"

"World endings, houses being pulled down, bypasses built…honestly, Jack, you should read a…" Ianto yawns, "A book one of these days…"

"I'll have you know I've read books that haven't even been written yet," Jack says as indignantly as he can manage in that low rumble he speaks in when he's tired. He says something else about future classics and you people having no idea, but Ianto's already asleep, and Jack's not far behind.

-

The next morning, Jack gives him a sapphire blue tie to wear.

Ianto smiles as Jack ties it for him. This is a ritual he could get used to, despite yesterday's mind-numbing terror. And if that sound a little odd, he chalks it up to Torchwood and leans just a little bit into Jack's big hands as they work at the tie, and they smile at each other and kiss and really, everything's just fine.

**AN: **Title lifted from Emily Dickinson:

The rose did caper on her cheek  
Her bodice rose and fell  
Her pretty speech, like drunken men  
Did stagger pitiful  
Her fingers fumbled at her work  
Her needle would not go  
What ailed so smart a little maid  
It troubled me to know  
Till opposite I spied a cheek  
That bore another rose  
Just opposite another speech  
That like the drunkard goes  
A vest that, like the bodice,  
Danced to the immortal tune  
Till those two troubled little clocks  
Ticked softly into one

Line about Thursdays lifted from the Hitchhiker's Guide.

. 


End file.
